The dragon's harem

The shelter quickly took form beside the cave’s entrance. The root ball worked wonders to keep the heat in, while the wall of logs that Agnar built kept the cold wind at bay, allowing them to use their tents to make a roof and build a decent hiding place.

It was a cozy little place where they could hide and warm up. Usually, smoke would smell bad to people, but here, where the snow was three meters deep and the air was so cold that your breath would freeze, smoke smelled like heaven, because it meant there was a place that had fire.

If something smelled funny, it was probably because of Ignis, who smelled a lot like sulfur and pumice.

Agnar looked at the cozy and warm-looking little shelter, the snow was picking up around, quickly growing harsher and stronger, while Obelisk was still out in the forest hunting monsters. She didn’t seem bothered by the cold, so he didn’t argue with her.

Besides, to Agnar, looking at her felt no different than looking at a monster. She might look like a girl his age, but she was nothing but a harrowing being much like Arad and Gojo… no, Arad looks scary even in his human form. Kali would be a better example, even though she looks younger than Agnar, far thinner and childish, the fact that she is a demon goddess of destruction capable of turning the entire world upside down never fails to give him cold sweat.

One time, he even saw a bunch of kids trying to bully her, snot bastards. Agnar didn’t beat the living hell out of them, but it was for their own good.

So, he didn’t have to worry about Obelisk.

Right now, not many powerful people are in Gojo’s kingdom. There were some S-rankers, but they are still mortals and would need time to prepare and embark into the frigid cold snow.

The weather wasn’t the only problem here; monsters in those woods were far scarier and deadlier than those in Alina. Alina’s monster forest had mostly B-rank monsters and very few A-rank monsters; S-rank horrors rarely spawned.

But here, A-rank monsters were the norm, and S-rank nightmare-inducing terrors are more common. For example, those cute and fluffy snow bunnies. They travel in packs of hundreds, lay in ambush in the snow, and eat people alive. They are an A-rank threat as a group, and a C-rank individually.

The rule of thumb is that ten monsters of a single class working together would qualify as a group powerful enough to get the rank right above. So, at least ten C-rank monsters working together are needed to be considered a B-rank threat, and since those bunnies can form groups of hundreds, they reach A-rank.

That’s why it’ll take time for help to arrive. They aren’t in a safe and easy-to-reach place.

Lucy should be working with Liliana to form and send people here to secure the cave and the hell gate resting in its deepest caverns. An advanced party of adventurers should arrive first to secure the area, and then the army later on, with a flock of wizards to study and start looking for clues.

The advanced adventurer’s party shouldn’t arrive until tomorrow morning if they decide to travel through the night, which isn’t advised at all. So it would be more reasonable to expect them to arrive tomorrow evening, and the army would take a few days to march through the thick snow.

Quite a long time to survive in the cold.

Agnar and his party would have to stay here and guard the cave at least until the adventurers’ party arrives, but even then, it would be best if Yuwaku and Obelisk stay and assure the cave’s safety until the whole army arrives. Since those two are stronger than any S-ranker, except a rare few. Obelisk is not defeating Nina or Alcott anytime soon.

Of course, they can always leave. Obelisk is the only one who won’t leave; they are here to assist her after all. But as things stand now, Agnar would end up staying here with Yuwaku and Ignis until the army arrives.

Agnar sat down and looked at the burning flames. Yuwaku was sitting beside him, grilling a pork sausage on a stick. Obelisk was out, surveying the forest. Unlike them, she was a demonic slime, and based on her words, cold and heat didn’t affect her that much.

She also doesn’t need sleep, and thus, she wanted to stay outside, running around the forest to keep all monsters away. She didn’t even need to fight, just make herself known.

That means Agnar was left alone with Yuwaku and Ignis in this small shelter, which he didn’t mind. But looking at the flames and snow around them, this place won’t last for more than a couple of days.

The wood he used to build the wall and bed is wet, so it won’t catch on fire for now. But in a day, it’ll dry out and become a hazard; all that sap can burst into flames in the blink of an eye and roast him like a pork sausage.

He needs to make a better fire pit with stones, pull the wall a bit further back, and make it bigger. The bed he built was also a tad bit small, good for sticking together and conserving heat, which he didn’t mind since it’s Yuwaku who’ll be sleeping beside him, but it was not that comfortable. With the time constraint, he did build it as big as he could, but he’ll need to get back to working on it first thing in the morning.

At least he has some bison hide to use as bedding and blankets.

The roof also wasn’t good at all. They got new tents here, but they aren’t made for this cold. Even the people of Gojo’s kingdom knew that camping in three-meter-deep snow and enough cold wind to freeze their eyelashes in seconds was bad. None of them would come here, so their tents aren’t designed for this cold.

Right now, they were using those tents as a temporary roof, but it won’t last long, so Agnar needs to build a new one with wood and make it strong enough to endure the heavy snowfall.

Agnar felt lucky to have trained under Arad and Alcott, even if it was for a short while. Training with Arad made him able to endure harsh conditions and exhaustion very well. Arad would keep fighting him until he passed out from exhaustion all the time after all.

Alcott’s training also helped a lot, probably even more than what Arad taught him. Thanks to Alcott, Agnar now holds a bag filled with all sorts of tools and gadgets. Alcott’s first rule was to have at least a tool for everything he could think about stored nearby. With magic bags, weight and size aren’t a problem.

Inside Agnar’s magical bag, he has food, different weapons and spares, axes, saws, nails, hammers, a kite, couple of tents, some logs, fire starters, potions, socks, a robe, a random key, a net, fishing rod, he even has a spyglass, a stack of paper and some charcoal in case he needed to map a dungeon.

Of course, most of those things were reserved for emergencies. He won’t be using the rations in his bag unless they can’t hunt for food, he won’t be pulling those spare tents unless he can’t build a shelter, and he won’t be using the healing potions unless they can’t get a healer.

And right now, Agnar got this horrible, bad feeling that something bad is about to happen, and he couldn’t take his eyes from the cave’s gaping maw for long.

The sun was falling behind the horizon, and he stood.

“That cave is creeping me out. Don’t you feel anything from it?”

Yuwaku looked at him for a moment, then turned back to her pork sausage.

“There is a hell gate in there. It might be buried deep underground, but a hell gate is still a hell gate. Just how we’re sitting here and waiting, I bet devils are sitting on the other side and doing the same.” She looked at him.

“No, it’s a matter of who would dare attack first. Will they come into our frigid land, or will we go into their infernal hell?” Waving her sausage, she moved aside and called Agnar to come sit with her beside the flames.

“No need to worry about it. Devils aren’t monsters; they won’t start stampeding out of the hell gate like monsters out of a dungeon.” She extended her hand to him. “Want to eat?”

Agnar sighed and sat beside her, looked at the flames for a while, then sighed again.

“Gotta butcher the reindeer Obelisk caught.” Outside their tent, in the cold snow, a reindeer’s carcass lay there, half frozen. He didn’t want to do it, but it’ll freeze solid by morning, then he won’t be able to skin it, so he’d better get to work before the sun fully dawns.

Thankfully, Arad taught him how to do it.